


Sweet Tooth

by lazulisong



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Cupcakes, Food, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-05
Updated: 2013-04-05
Packaged: 2017-12-07 12:58:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/748769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazulisong/pseuds/lazulisong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John buys cupcakes on Wednesday. He hasn't had one for a couple five years, but why not? he thinks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sweet Tooth

**Author's Note:**

> "From the FAQ:
> 
> ...if a story begins, "On Monday, John went to the post office. On Tuesday, he shot some guys in the kneecaps and punched some guys in the face. On Wednesday, he bought cupcakes," and the rest of the story is about John picking out cupcakes, it would not require the [Graphic violence] label.
> 
> Now I must have the story where John buys cupcakes. Up to you whether the final story does or does not in fact require the graphic violence label."

On Wednesday, John bought cupcakes.

There was a little bakery on one of the routes he ran, one of the type with a depressingly twee name and a store design self-consciously and ironically based on 1950s Good Housekeeping ads. The owners were in their late twenties and aggressively interested in local foods and organic ingredients; John thought they looked like they'd spent two or three years in Portland with the other fucking hipsters and then come back to New York to use their trust fund money.

They seemed nice enough, though, always there at four am while John ran past; sweeping the sidewalk and setting up chairs by six am for the muffin crowd. The shop smelled good, too, sweet but not cloying. And John _liked_ cupcakes, secretly, a little ashamed of himself. They were such an unnecessary thing, such a civilian thing. He'd dreamed about them a couple times overseas, and woken up almost able to taste them. In his dreams he was in grade school again, and it was someone's birthday (not his) or someone's wife had made a bunch and they'd brought them in, half shamed, half proud, to the guys at the base; he hadn't had one for five years maybe. 

That Wednesday he took Bear with him for his run. Finch was deep in some coding fugue state and Bear had rolled his eyes up at him in mute appeal, so they'd run a couple five miles and were cooling down when they passed the shop. The owners kept an old dog bowl, a battered metal thing, outside, and Bear made a beeline for it. John stood holding Bear's leash while Bear lapped noisily at the water, and one of the owners poked her head out and said, "Is there enough water? Let me." Bear licked at the bottom of the bowl, and the girl took the bowl away and brought out more water, so cold the sides of the bowl were dewed with it, and Bear drank about half of it all at once and then tried to lick her hand too.

"Thanks," said John. He looked in the window while the girl petted Bear and made a fuss of him, and decided quite suddenly that he wanted a cupcake. There was one with a piped fat marshmallowy looking bird that he could get for Harold, too. "I don't want to leave him, but -- could I get one of those with the bird? and a Chantilly one, with the fruit on top." He pulled out his wallet. 

When he got back to the library Bear was walking funny from trying to both heel and get his nose up into the box of cupcakes and John pulled out the dog cookie the girl had thrown in and sent him off to his bed. Harold was still hunched over his monitors, and barely looked up as they walked in. "A good run, Mr Reese?" he said. 

"Pretty fair," said John, setting the cupcake for Harold where he would see it when he looked up from coding again, but away from Bear's eager nose. 

John's cupcake was delicious; he tasted the memory of it all day long.


End file.
